


Too Much

by nevermindgrantaire



Series: She Keeps Me Warm [5]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: ..... for now, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Friends With Benefits, Multi, Pining, bi!Grantaire, girl Enjolras, girl Grantaire, this is probably going to turn out sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 01:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2562761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevermindgrantaire/pseuds/nevermindgrantaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire has long since given up on having a chance with her long term crush, Enjolras.<br/>She still goes to the meetings because she can't bear her life without the light that she brings but the tensions between the two build too far and harsh words are exchanged.<br/>Montparnasse is a bit of a dick, but his heart is in the right place at least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Much

R felt warm lips brush against her ear and along her jawline, and smiled because even though her eyes were closed, she could feel the light radiating and she knew. She just knew who it was.

Her hand clenched in the sheets as the lips brushed a pressure point on her neck and she gasped, wriggling in the warm glow. She couldn’t stop smiling, even as her eyes flickered open when the lips grazed her collar bone and her lips slipped apart with a gasp, and the light got brighter and brighter. So bright it was dazzling. So bright it was hurting her eyes, but she didn’t care, so bright that it made her mind scream but all she could feel was the warmth and the lightness of the touch, the breath on her skin and the nail scraping sharply on her shoulder and making her almost scream.

“Enjolras,” she breathed and her mouth fell open in a wide smile.

 

Her eyes snapped open.

It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the darkness of her room, the absence of the warm, buttery light from her dream. She lay for a moment, waiting for her heat to stop beating so fast, and sat up, hating herself. Dreams like that left her achingly lonely, never mind who was lying beside her. Guilt wriggled in her chest and she could feel her cheeks flush. Raking her fingers through her hair, she looked around for a drink and grabbed a beer bottle lying beside the mattress. Empty. “Fuck,” she muttered. She could hear the tap in her tiny kitchen dripping, over and over.

  


_She'd called him, utterly wasted, at 3 in the morning, begging him to come over because she couldn't bare to be alone. He'd shown up five minutes later, a bottle of some unidentifiable alcohol clasped in a paper bag in his hand and his slicked back hair greasy from the rain with tiny mud splatters on his pristine shoes and eyes that darted and saw and noticed everything._

_She'd only chosen him to begin with because he echoed her sometimes in his movements, in the slim lines of his waist, in his smile and his coolness._

_  
_

She didn't love him, and when she looked across at the other half of the bed, he was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, you’re awake.” Came a voice from the other side of the room, and she looked up. Montparnasse stood drinking cheap coffee silhouetted in the dim dawn light seeping through the window, his shirt hanging between his fingers and his belt half done up. His tattoos looked paler, duller in the morning light. On his shoulder there was a long thin stretching scar that puckered and contracted with each movement and she tried not to look at it too long because it made her feel lightheaded.

“Fuck.” She said again. Traces of her dream were coming back to her now even stronger, twisting in her stomach like a knife and smashing into reality. Her head pounded- the hangover from hell, she thought glumly. Her boobs hurt randomly too- she poked one and scowled at it, as if that would help. She’d need to stop by the chemist on the way to work and pick up some paracetamol.  “Mont, I-”

Parnasse downed the coffee and huffed at her. “You said her name again last night.”

“What?”

“Your Artemis. Enjol- whatever. Sounds like a sneeze. Posh girl.”

R pulled the thin blanket tighter round her shoulders, feeling the cold seeping through the walls in her shitty one room apartment. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not…” He sighed. “I don’t care.”

She nodded, looking around on the floor by the bed for her hoodie to wear. Parnasse noticed and chucked it towards her. She caught it, and shook her head in protest. “I don’t love her.”

He laughed, bitter. “Yeah you do. But that doesn’t matter, to me or to her.”

Grantaire scowled and pulled on the hoodie, finding her cigarettes in the pocket and lighting one. “Don’t be a dick.”

  


_He made her laugh sometimes. But that wasn't ever the reason she called him, or he texted her. He called her pretty sometimes, and she was about 70% sure that he wasn't being sarcastic. He wasn't a bad guy._

_He wasn't a particularly good one either._

_  
_

“What?” He laughed, and dropped the coffee mug down on the stack of other plates in the kitchen arrangement. Flopping down onto the creaking mattress, he threw an arm casually around her shoulders and crossed his ankles on the duvet- she eyed his shoes for a moment, and then stuck her elbow sharply into his side. He jumped in shock, scrabbling to stop himself falling off the edge of the mattress and failing, tumbling in an undignified pile onto the manky carpet. “Oh, c’mon R. Cheer up, don't be a bitch.”

She almost laughed at him, quelling a smile as memories of the last night spiked up again. Biting her lip hard enough that it turned white, she looked up blankly at the damp-stained ceiling. “What am I doing, Mont? What are we doing here?”

“Having fun? Taking advantage of our loveless circumstances?” He sat up and glared at her. "No offence but I really don't give a fuck about your existential crisis, love."

R pulled a face at him and buried her face in a pillow, her voice coming out muffled. “Christ, it really is pathetic when you put it like that.”

“I know,” he agreed with a huff, hauling himself back onto the mattress. He stroked her messy hair, cut shorter since the last time he’d seen her and tangled from sleep and from the night before. “It really is.”

“Can we… not do this anymore?”

“Do what?”

“You know. This?” She gestured between the two of them. “Get drunk and cry about girls and screw and feel shitty after we’re done.”

"I don't cry." They sat in silence for a moment, R keeping her eyes fixed on the leak in her ceiling, dripping slowly into a tin bucket in the centre of the room. “Ok. Yeah,” he said finally. “You’re right.”

  


_The last night, he'd mentioned someone- a poet. Beautiful and willowy and definitely not Grantaire. She didn't know who he was talking about and she couldn't find it in her heart to be jealous of them, ever. If things fell apart, he deserved to find someone else. An upgrade._

_  
_

“I just…” She paused. “It’s Enjolras. I can’t just turn it off. I wish I could. I love her so much it hurts and she hates me.”

"I don't understand why you keep on showing up at those meetings."

"I just can't not. The last one was… Bad."

“Oh, R…” Parnasse’s hand stilled, a steadying warm weight on her skull.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We can’t help who we love, can we?”

R shook her head. “She’s worth so much more than me.”

“Oh, you know that’s not true!” Montparnasse comforted her awkwardly, checking his phone with his other hand.

“She said it herself. I’m worthless and I don’t belong with them.”

  


_Enjolras stood up fast, so fast her chair shot out from underneath her and almost floored Bossuet as he crossed through on the way back from the bar with another round. "You're being ridiculous."_

_"Don't let yourself get provoked," Combeferre placed a calming hand on her shoulder but she shook it off._

_"You believe in nothing, Grantaire! This is not your place, you do not belong here."_

_"Enjolras!" Courf half stood up, her face draining of colour._

_But the French girl lowered her voice dangerously and narrowed her eyes. "You believe in nothing,"  she repeated._

_Grantaire laughed through her fourth glass of wine, a warm blanket of dissasociativeness that she could wrap around herself, and reached out a hand. "I believe in you."_

_Enjolras dropped her hand like a hot potato and stepped back as if she were dirty in some way, which she supposed she sort of was. "Everything is a joke to you, isn't it?"_

_"It is when it comes out of your mouth." That's a lie._

_Enjolras was practically shaking. "Why don't you just go, then? You're worthless."_

_That hit her like a slap in the face- she stood up and stumbled back a step, shaking. Her mouth opened to say something, anything, but she couldn't._

_Around them, the whole room was silent, watching them._

_Courfeyrac touched Enjolras' arm, turning her away. "Enough," she said, softly but firmly._

_Grantaire left, silently, and proceeded to get exceedingly drunk and call Montparnasse over._

_  
_

“R. They’re your friends too.”

She snorted and shook her head, dropping the subject before she started crying. “It would be so much easier if I loved you and you loved me.”

“I doubt it. I don’t think it gets easier for people like us.”

“People like us?”

“The unlucky ones.” He shrugged. “Life’s trash heap.”

R got up, tugging the hoodie down to cover her butt and reaching for the ash-tray. “This sucks.”

“Yup.”

“Want a drink?”

“Haven’t you had enough?”

She laughed sadly, for one moment the pale morning light catching her skin and making her look ethereal, almost pretty for an instant before she moved out of the light and was back to being ordinary. One hand slid over her stomach like she was holding herself together with her paint-stained, nail-bitten fingers. “Believe me, baby, it's never enough.”

 

  


\--

  


 

The evening before the protest was scheduled, Bossuet texted R making sure she was ok to come.

To: Grantaire

Hi, love- just seeing if you’ll be joining us tomorrow? Don’t worry if not, but we’ll miss you.

To: Bossuet

I’m fine, don’t worry about me! :) I’ll be there.

To: Grantaire

Sure? That was really shitty of Enj. You'll always belong with us.

To: Bossuet

I really am fine.

To: Bossuet

It's not like it's something I didn't know already.

 

Then she climbed into bed with a tub of ice cream and swore she was never leaving her bed, the ache in her stomach growing worse and better but always there no matter what she did to try and quell it. The day of the protest came around too fast and then the protest went too quickly too; she had never felt so conscious that she stood silent amongst a crowd of cheering people, never more like an outsider than there in that crowd of people who still held hope in their hearts.

She felt so obvious, like hopeless, pathetic love was written all over her face for the world to see and with the looks that they all kept sending her it probably was. Courfeyrac oveer-compensated, flirting dramatically and kissing her on the cheek and it made her smile but when she looked up, Enjolras was looking pointedly away.

At least Enjolras didn’t try to speak to her, and the others seemed happy to let them have some space and stay apart, at least for now. R banded together with Eponine, becoming her shadow as she darted in and out of the separate groups on the march.

The march ended in the middle of Kings Park (and Enjolras was clearly not going to be happy about that, R thought with a smile and then bit her lip) by a huge statue monument- the crowds slowly dispersed but most of the Amis stayed, chatting and laughing.

Grantaire hovered, unsure, when Joly and Bossuet swept her back into their mix. Musi dropped a kiss on her forehead and Bahorel picked her up in celebration of a succesful protest.

She smiled, for a moment.

  


\--------

  


R sat on the steps with the others at the end of the protest, yawning and helping Joly to examine all the little bruises and scrapes that they'd all received in the huge crowds, when Enjolras came up to her. She shifted uneasily in her seat, avoiding her like she was trying not to look into the sun.

"What do you want, Blondie?" she asked, her tone studiously light.

Enjolras' hair was slicked back with sweat, eyes squinting in the brightness of the glowing pink-streaked sky. "Can I talk to you?" she asked, and her French accent did ridiculous things to R's stomach no matter how frustrated and angry she was.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Eponine watching them carefully from behind Marius and she nodded coolly towards Enjolras and then shot a smile towards her to let her know that she didn't need saving. "Fine."

Enjolras took her hand and oh ok that didn't help matters, frankly, and pulled her away from the main group and behind a tree so that the others couldn't see them.

"What did you want to say?"

The French girl smiled thinly at her. "I wanted to apologise."

"Who put you up to it?" R snorted. "Combeferre? Or Courf?"

"No one!" There was a disbelieving pause. "Well. Courf suggested it might be nessacary. I'm sorry. I didn't realise how much my words would upset you."

This time, R laughed out loud, long and bitter. "You didn't realise telling me that I'm worthless and don't belong here would upset me? Ok, are we done here?"

"That's not what I meant! I mean... I say things I don't mean when I'm angry. And I don't think it's true."

"Then why say it?" Enjolras opened her mouth, but Grantaire looked away, her heart jumping. "I'm going home."

"You haven't accepted the apology."

"It wasn't a proper apology."

"Grantaire, please forgive me." That seemed almost the first time Enjolras had used her full name.

"I'm not going to accept the apology."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not your bloody lap dog! You can't stand there and say all these horrible things to me and expect it to be ok the moment you say sorry. It doesn't mean anything anymore." _Yes you can, you absolutely can because the moment I look into your eyes I forget everything and I just can't help it. I'd forgive you anything._

"I'm sorry! What more can I say?"

Grantaire's shoulders dropped slightly, the fight going out of her. "Whatever. Don't worry about it. It's fine. You're forgiven."

Enjolras pouted at her. "Just tell me what you want me to do."

Trying desperately to ignore all the different ways that sentence could be taken, R couldn't help her vision slightly dipping down to watch Enjolras' lips while she spoke. She forced herself to look away. "I said it's fine."

"But it isn't." She paused. "I value your opinion. You help keep me balanced. And I lash out at you and get angry because you're the only one who's brave enough to stand up to me."

Grantaire kept looking down, but her eyes lifted slightly. She bit her lip again, worrying at a piece of loose skin.

"Look at me." The French girl sounded amused suddenly, taking a step towards her so that R had to take a step too or they would have been touching. Her back hit the bark of the tree, making her jump, and her hand scrabbled for a grip. "I said look at me."

She could never refuse Enjolras anything.

She looked up.

Enjolras was scrutinising her face for something, her eyes searching and it was clear that she'd found it because she took another step forward. She seemed almost amused, her plush, bitten lips curling into a smirk. "Tell me to stop. Tell me to stop and I will," she said but R barely heard her. She couldn't tear her eyes away from her, the tiny freckle on her upper lip and a long golden fly-away curl that was sticking to her neck slightly in the heat. And those lips, suddenly getting a lot closer.

When Enjolras kissed her quickly on the cheek and then pulled back to gauge her reaction, she almost fainted.

"Is that enough of an apology? Or maybe no, more," she said, and kissed her other cheek. "Like we do in France, yes? Enough yet? Or no?"

Grantaire stared at her speechlessly, gaping at her with lips slightly parted and eyes bugging.

Enjolras laughed. "Apparently no. Well, that must be remedied." And she darted forward and stopped her mouth with a kiss.

It was intended to be a fast kiss like the other two, a brief brush of lips, but the instant their lips touched, R made a whining sound in the back of her throat and Enjolras sighed into the kiss, deepening it and letting her hand wander lightly up and down R’s side, over her hip. Her thumb brushed at the skin just underneath her top, stroking up and down her hipbone and it made R shiver.

Her other hand brushed the side of her face, pushing her hair back and running her forefinger across her jawbone, and then tangled in her hair so that she could tilt her head and lengthen the kiss. The pressure, the slight pain and the shock of reality made R moan into the kiss and then she pulled back sharply, covering her mouth with her hands, embarrassed at the noise she’d just made. Enjolras laughed at her, pulling her back close so that she could suck little gentle kiss-bruises along her neck and across her jaw.

Grantaire's hands flapped uselessly at her sides for a moment, before she bought them up to surround Enjolras' waist, rumpling the fabric of her shirt and the waistband of her bright red shorts. She coudn't help but marvel at her, how delicate and elegant she was, and she let her kiss her again, and again, and again, drinking it in with a death wish because this was going to kill her in the end.

She thought about how this was all a dream and how she'd wake up soon, alone and hungover and sad and lonely but then Enjolras bit her shoulder and let her kisses trail down along the contours of her tattoo, stopping at her wrist for another kiss, and her brain functions seemed to short out.

R was breathless, gasping and she let her eyes fall shut and her head loll back forward slightly onto Enjolras' shoulder, letting out a low hum of pleasure. Enjolras mouthed at her ear, and at her gasp she smiled against her skin and did it again. “You’re not worthless,” she murmured, so low that R barely knew if she were talking to her. “And I’m sorry.” She pulled away and R instantly felt the absence of her lips, all too aware suddenly that she was stood in a park in the aftermath of a protest, looking wrecked. “Come home with me?”

“Yes,” Grantaire breathed. “Of course.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! :)


End file.
